The Absence of Darkness
by LyingLittleLemming
Summary: He spends his time on the shores of the island he can't leave; watching birds as they fly by, longing to be free. Yet one day he disappeared, that day no one knew how or why. That day the darkness faded, and another bird flew free in the sky.


**Monday 15****th**** April 2052**

**11:07 AM**

The light breeze carried the crackling thud of soldier's outsized boots over the smooth pebbles along the shoreline; which was softly lapped by the gentle waves of the freezing cold tides. The Sea so bitter that you wouldn't endure two minutes before you found yourself combatting death. Three minutes, if you were lucky, yet the termination would come, whether it be from the chill or from drowning.

_Death always wins._

Unwillingly, Matthias wandered within the four soldiers which grouped in a square establishment around him; the jangling of his hand cuffs clanking in time with the jolting of their footsteps created a hostile duet of imprisonment. He kept his gaze hazily fixed on the sight in front of him; a long pebbled road leading up from the shoreline and over the hills towards a large fort-like structure of a prison. The prison itself was small, since there were a very few number of prisoners that were classified as dangerous enough to have to be kept in the brutal island of exile.

Around the perimeter of the building, young men stood working in asphyxiating silence with sweat running like a solid stream down their pale faces, as if they had been there for hours on end. Days on end. Months and years without an end. However all working stopped as their heads tilted slightly to the side in order to look at the new prisoner with heavily lidded, tired eyes. They set their gaze on the Dane which was glazed over like they were looking straight through him until they had examined him enough to return to their clockwork labour…

Matthias kept his head down as he was lead up through the main gates which creaked open at his arrival – as if automatic, yet there was the hollow shell of two young boys who had opened the two gates in perfect sync despite their stumbling, messy footwork over the pebbles from exhaustion as they repeated the act they had done untold numbers of times.

As the new prisoner passed through, he turned to one of the boys in order to study him from head to foot closer; He looked like a walking skeleton, his pale skin barely being able to contain the bones within him, his small pump-like shoes were worn with half of the under tread hanging off. Which to this Matthias imagined that they would be impossible to walk along the pebbled path in without a significant amount of pain to draw blood. The prisoner's uniform he wore was ragged, torn and tattered, with the washed out colours matching the young boys own pale skin tone.

The boy kept his head hung heavily forward as if he didn't contain the energy to lift it. His eyes were covered by his over grown, silvery white hair that fell over his face.

Yet with whatever hope, pride and strength he had left, he slowly raised his head so that his hair fell back to the way it naturally hung and revealed his eyes.

If his bright pools of purple hadn't met Matthias' blue ones, he would never have recognised him.

"Emil?!" Matthias froze in his tracks with the overwhelming determination to run towards the Icelandic. Unfortunately, he started to struggle in the cuffs around his ankles prevented him from running and he thrashed around as the soldiers around him tried to push him onwards up the path.

He gritted his teeth in frustration that Emil had no chains, no fence, and no barrier that stopped _him_ from running to the Dane. Yet Emil stayed where he was; whether it was because of his own exhaustion, his own loss of belief,

or simply because he thought that, if he showed how much he pleaded for one of Denmark's welcoming hugs he'd normally push away or how much he simply wanted to see his cheerful smile again, Matthias would be wasting his strength on him.

Iceland simply gazed at the Dane as he was dragged up the path towards the building through the same still beautiful and colourful eyes that he was blessed with.

Even if they had lost their light.

**Monday 15****th**** April 2052**

**12:32 AM**

Matthias swallowed thickly at the sign on the door; it sickened him to think the creators of this murderous island even dared to use labels from a child's environment.

Headmaster's office.

One of the soldiers who had escorted him into the building knocked firmly on the wooden door before it eventually creaked open with a voice ordering them to step inside. The Dane was pushed into the office with the soldier still gripping onto his shackled hands that had been fixed behind his back.

"It's about time we caught you..." A dusty man at dusty desk sniggered as he traced one large boot in front of the other to walk towards his new prisoner. "You're the last one of your kind we hadn't caught... Now you get to stay here with all your lovely friend for the rest of your existence. Isn't that what you want?"

Matthias fixed a stern glare into the others eyes and tensed his body "All I want, is to spit in your face and kick you in the balls, but I'm afraid I might dirty my spit." He snarled.

"Rude." The man sighed as he shook his head "Well we better get this over with so we can send you on your way." He chuckled sinisterly as he reached into a drawer of his desk, which gave a senior creek as it opened; out of it came a dusty camera.

"Smile." The 'headmaster' hissed as he held up the camera, and the Soldier holding Matthias gripped his chin and forced him to look directly at it despite his squirming.

_His picture was added to the file containing all Nations, therefore making the file complete. Each nation was accounted for. _

_Each Nation separated from their homeland for a long enough time will eventually break the bond between Country landmass and personification which will send them to their deaths._

_Each Nation imprisoned away from their countries._

_Each now a prisoner of the Fjords_

_Except one. _

**AN: This story is based between three stories of Unfair Imprisonment, Hope and Fighting for a right to survive. Hope you enjoy!**

**Rated M for language and deepened themes.**

**Reviews are as appreciated as always as the more feedback I get the more I feel the need to continue the story rolling.**


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